


Misread

by sgamadison



Category: Almost Human
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-17
Updated: 2014-01-17
Packaged: 2018-01-09 00:18:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1139198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sgamadison/pseuds/sgamadison
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dorian was pouting. There was no other word for it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Misread

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Dreamwidth snowflake_challenge "Try something new." Beta read by squidgiepdx; all mistakes are mine. Though I wrote this as a gen story, it could be taken to be pre-slash, depending on the tightness of your goggles.

“I can’t believe you’re still pouting.”  John Kennex glanced sideways at his partner, who sat in stony-faced silence. He wasn’t used to seeing the ‘blank face’ from Dorian. For a synthetic, Dorian had one of the most expressive faces he’d ever seen. Hell, he was more expressive than half the cops that worked on the force. But then again, Dorian was different; he was one of the discontinued DRN series. One of the ‘crazy ones’ as Det. Paul liked to say. John might be openly...unhappy... about being partnered with a synthetic, but at least he didn’t have one of the creepy Ken Doll MXs.  Well, at least, not  anymore.

“Pout-ing.” John drew out the syllables in a sing-song voice. He shot a sly look in Dorian’s direction, but nothing. Nada. Zip. The stone face was firmly in place.

The pouting had to stop.

They sped along the highway, easily sliding in and out of traffic, cars magically making way for the police vehicle that flew past them with flashing lights.  John wasn’t a talkative man. He liked silence. He was comfortable with the throaty roar of the armored police car and the background chatter of dispatch. He didn’t need conversation. But Dorian’s silence had a heavy weight to it that was as annoying as fuck.

“Are you sure you’re running on a full tank today? Cause you should be all juiced up now. No excuses.” He smiled as he remembered Dorian walking up to Paul and clocking him on the jaw. He’d give anything to have a digital recording of that. It had been a thing of beauty.

He liked it less when Dorian’s moodiness was aimed at him. “So, running at 100 percent, right? No mood swings, business as usual.”

Dorian finally turned his head to look at John, but his expression now smoldered with resentment.

“What?” John protested. “You wanted out of the precinct. I got you out of the precinct!”

Dorian returned to gazing out the windshield.

They reached the crime scene and got down to work. Dorian only answered when asked a direct question. By the time they got back in the car and headed back to the precinct, John was starting to get mad.

“Really? Seriously? You’re going to be a big baby about this, aren’t you?” John asked, aggressively slamming the gearshift into park when they arrived at the station. “Jeez. Try to do a guy a favor...”

That did it. Dorian’s hand snapped up, his index finger pointing up right in a position of ‘stop right there’, his mouth folded into a tight line. “You got me a room with Rudy. He considers me his _roommate_.”

“That’s a bad thing?” He couldn’t keep the smile out of his voice. The look on Dorian’s face when he’d announced the arrangement had been priceless. Especially since Rudy had been so obviously excited about the idea, and Dorian had not.

Dorian went back to pouting again. Because that’s what it was. Pouting. And that was no way for a grown synthetic to act.

They spent the next hour tracking down leads and lining up suspects. This was going to be fairly routine. Your average robbery with perps too stupid to be left out on the street. John was happy to go round them up for questioning. From there it would be a simple matter of proving that they were guilty. They may have worn expensive facial feature blocking devices, but one of the bozos had a very distinctive tatt on his forearm. Sometimes it was just too easy.

It was nice to have easy for a change. To be able to anticipate clocking out at a decent hour for once. As soon as the thought crossed his mind, John winced. Now he’d done it. Something was bound to screw things up. He’d never been superstitious before he’d become a cop. The promise of getting home early, only to have it dashed at the last second, was ten times worse than not anticipating getting off early at all. It was the crushed hope that was so disappointing. Better not to hope in the first place.

Feeling as though he’d quoted Macbeth in a theater, John was more than a little irritable when they went out in search of the perp with the distinctive tattoo. Of course, Dorian had been able to identify the number of ink artists capable of that kind of work, and then located an image of the same tatt as an advertisement for the studio. The management had kept good records, and was cooperative, for a change. In a very short time, they were back on the road again with a name and an address. Once they picked up the perp for questioning, it would only be a matter of time before they had the names of the other participants in the robbery.

Of course, the perp didn’t want to be brought in. The idiot actually decided that making a run for it was a good idea, when they were only bringing him in for questioning.  He took one look at John and Dorian and tried to slam the door shut. When John shouldered his way in, the perp turned to run out the back. That’s when it got ugly. John grabbed him by the collar, and the perp came around swinging.

John was almost glad for it. He had a significant amount of pent-up rage within him, and though most days he kept it on a pretty short leash, sometimes you just had to let loose the dogs of war, you know? Any excuse was good enough. At first he relished the contact of fist on flesh, even when the perp got in a good blow himself. But it quickly dawned on him that the perp not only had thirty pounds on him, but he was at least fifteen years younger as well. This guy was pure mean muscle, which explained his utter stupidity, but didn’t make him any easier to subdue.

Particularly when Dorian wasn’t lifting a finger to intervene.

“A little help here?” John snarled over his shoulder at Dorian, who merely raised a cool eyebrow back at him. John grunted as the perp landed a hard punch to his kidney. Growling, he took the man’s face between his hands and head-butted him. Hard. Hard enough to make bright yellow sparks shoot off behind his eyelids. John swam unsteadily on his feet for a moment before spinning the also-groggy suspect around to slam him face first against the wall.

Dorian slid in smoothly to cuff him.

“Oh, thanks for the help there, buddy.” John let the sarcasm drip off his tongue. That wasn’t the only thing dripping. He felt a warm trickle beneath his nose, and wiped it with the back of his hand. He stared at the blood with sense of disbelief and growing anger, mouth tightening into a grim line. He shoved the perp out the door with a little more force than was strictly necessary.

On the way back to the precinct, John couldn’t help but let off a little steam.

“I can’t believe you were just going to stand back and let this punk beat the shit out of me.” John indicated the suspect behind the force field in the back of the police car with a jerk of his head.

“You seemed to have matters well in control.” There was something of a hidden meaning in Dorian’s calm response, and John felt like he was just too stupid to see that the synthetic was making a joke at his expense. Which naturally pissed him off.

“This is about you being pissed with me because I wouldn’t let you stay at my place, isn’t it? Well, that’s gratitude for you.” John cut off the car beside him by crossing several lanes at once. He ignored the squeal of braking tires behind him.

“There is a big difference between refusing to let me room with you and you making alternative arrangements on your own.”

“That’s what you’re so pissed about? Do you want to go back to the precinct, then? Is that it?” John sped up and passed another car.”

“No.” Dorian’s reply was clipped, precise. Almost like an MX.

“Fine.” John snapped. “Make your own arrangements, then.”

“I can hardly do that now, not without hurting Rudy’s feelings.”

“Have it your way.” John hit the siren briefly when a car refused  to budge in his lane, then swerved violently to make the exit ramp.

“For fucks sake!” The perp righted himself with his shoulders against the back seat as the car stabilized once more. “Are you two old maids finished with your little cat fight? God, you argue worse than a married couple.”

John glanced up into the rear view mirror and shot a Death Ray Glare at the suspect. “You shut up.”

“I would listen to him,” Dorian said in a tone of eerie calm. Too calm. It was as though he was deliberating playing up that he was a synthetic, which, God knows, was out of character for him. For a brief moment, the idea that maybe there was something wrong with his circuitry blipped across John’s radar, giving him a moment’s panic. Nah. Dorian was just trying to make him feel bad.

“Yeah. What he said.” John felt a little silly as soon as the words came out his mouth. Still, it would look bad to dope-slap himself.

Dorian raised that supercilious eyebrow at him again, and then went on, just as calm. “He has a way of shooting things that refuse to shut up.”

“Or push them out of the car,” John added, shifting his glare to Dorian.

“Or push them out of the car.” Dorian’s matter-of-fact agreement was the last straw.

John clamped his lips shut and said nothing else for the remainder of the drive.

****

They interviewed the suspect, tripped him up in his own lies, offered him a deal if he turned on his buddies, and sent people out to round up the remainder of the gang. At the residence of one of the suspects, they discovered nearly all of the stolen goods—electronics that were in the process of having their registration numbers replaced with fake codes. They also netted over six thousand dollars worth of medical quality Special K. John half expected Dorian to give him the rundown on the origins of the name and the way the drug had morphed over time: from an anesthetic primarily used in cats to a hallucinogen capable of distorting reality for nearly 24 hours with a single snort of its crystallized form. Sometimes the old drugs were still the most popular. It was almost nostalgic, in a weird way. But Dorian didn’t volunteer the information and John didn’t ask for the details.

“Well, I guess that’s it for the day.” John paused by his desk, adjusting a few files in front of his computer. He glanced around for something else to put away, but seriously, the desk was tidy for once.

Dorian came to a stop as well, out of seeming politeness. Or maybe he was waiting to be officially dismissed for the evening. John was determined to put this awkwardness behind them.

“So, you, um, heading over to Rudy’s now?” It was a casual question. It wasn’t like he really cared.

Dorian gave him a grave look, which in a way, was worse than the pissy ones. “Yes, I am, John.”

“Oh, come on, for Chrissakes, is it that bad?” He glanced around and lowered his voice. “Rooming with Rudy, I mean.”  He didn’t want anyone eavesdropping on the conversation. Bad enough that Rudy was happily chirping to everyone within hearing about his new roommate. He didn’t want word getting back to Rudy that Dorian was less than thrilled. Rudy Lom might be a strange little man, but he was useful and John didn’t want to anyone to hurt his feelings. And as odd as it would seem, Rudy _would_ be hurt if at the idea that even a synthetic wanted to avoid his company. Which, when John thought about it, would suck.

Dorian sighed and pushed a file on John’s desk so that it was ever so slightly cockeyed.

Frowning, John put the file back into place. When he looked up, Dorian was watching him.

Irritated without really knowing why, John snapped, “It has to be better than being downstairs with all the MXs, right?” He made a theatrical shudder that wasn’t all that far-fetched when he recalled going to the lower levels to look for Dorian and discovering a naked MX very much resembled an old-style Ken Doll, right down to the absence of any genitalia whatsoever. And why were they naked, FFS? Couldn’t they just charge in their clothing? It didn’t make any sense to him. He still had nightmares about what he’d seen downstairs. “I mean, talk about your lack of privacy.”

Dorian sighed again, dragging one finger slowly along the edge of John’s desk. Without looking up, he said, “At least with the MXs, you can tell them to leave you alone and they will. Not only will they leave you alone, but they will not be offended or wounded in the slightest by your request. Though I was in a room full of MXs, it was like being on a commuter train to work. I was alone in my own little bubble.”

He looked up then, his strikingly light colored eyes fixed on John. “I can’t do that with Rudy. He’s like the guy who comes in at lunch and strikes up a conversation when you only want to eat your food and read your book.”

John winced then. He knew the feeling well. It was one of the reasons he tried never to eat lunch or dinner and the precinct because there was usually someone who would interrupt him when he just needed a few minutes to decompress .

“He’s lonely and he is glad of my company. He wants to go out, to go places he wouldn’t go to alone for fear of looking strange. He wants to talk about his favorite shows, or the new restaurant he’s been wanting to try.  He wants to show me his bullet wound and ask me if there are any cases where we might need someone to go undercover again. At the end of a long day, all I want to do is relax, recharge, read a book.” Dorian shrugged.

Ouch. To be honest, this was what John had been afraid Dorian would be like had he taken over the spare room the way he’d suggested. When the last part of Dorian’s sentence finally registered, John frowned. “Wait a minute. You mean really read a book?”

Dorian raised that eyebrow again. “Yes. Is that so hard to believe?”

“Well, it’s just that you can access almost any database at will. Why the heck do you need to read anything? All you have to do is upload it. Not only can you quote Dickens, but you can do it in any voice you want.”

Dorian’s expression took on a slightly injured aspect. “Just because I can upload data doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the intellectual pleasure of holding an e-reader in my hands. I like the weight of it in my lap, and the tactile feel of turning the pages with a touch of my finger to the pad.”

“But it’s not necessary.” John looked at Dorian curiously. “Next you’ll be telling me you like eating.”

This time both eyebrows came up, as Dorian dropped his chin slightly and gave John a speaking look. “You could get a green square cube that would satisfy all your nutritional and caloric needs for the day, but you choose to eat downtown at quirky little diners, where the food is authentic and real. Both would meet your requirements, but one gives you greater satisfaction. Why is it so strange that I would like to read in peace?”

“I guess I just never thought about it before. I got the Soylent Green reference, by the way. I’m not exactly the cultural idiot you seem to think I am.” He liked to read a book himself now and again. Mostly because the world was a crappy place and he liked being somewhere else for a couple of hours.

Dorian made a little humming noise that sounded decidedly put out. “I guess not. See you in the morning, John.” He turned and headed for the main doors without another word.

John realized that Dorian’s ‘I guess not’ could be taken to mean his not being a cultural idiot or that John had never thought about synthetics having hobbies like reading. It was tempting to run after him for clarification, but he could feel the sluggishness in his prosthetic leg and knew he needed to go home soon and recharge as well.

Still, he puttered around his desk; loathe to go home just yet. He should go, he knew that. Staying was asking for trouble to find him. If he didn’t leave soon, a new case would come in, and being off-shift now was no guarantee he’d be able to sneak out the door.

When Valerie came into the room, he realized he’d been waiting to see her.

His lizard brain lit up at the sight of her. His higher consciousness urged caution. After all, he’d done young, hot, and beautiful once before, and look at where it had gotten him. Blown off his feet, face down in an alley and bleeding out from his shredded leg. Besides, office romances had a tendency to get messy. At that thought, something inside him rebelled, tight and angry. When the hell was he supposed to meet someone outside of work with the kind of crazy hours he kept? He should have known better when Anna had sought him out.

Setting aside all thoughts of Anna’s nearly lethal duplicity, he smiled at Valerie. She smiled back, friendly yet professional, as she made her way to her desk.

He collected his leather jacket and walked slowly toward the main doors, slow enough to have an excuse to stop if she said even a word. He felt the hesitation in his synthetic leg, and not for the first time wondered what he’d face if he ever took someone to bed again—would they look upon his prosthesis with shock and revulsion or acknowledge that is was just one of those things, a fact of life in today’s modern world that half a person’s parts now weren’t the original set? He didn’t know, and part of him shied away from finding out the answer. It was too soon after Anna’s betrayal, right? Too soon to put himself out there and risk a working relationship as well as total embarrassment. For everyone else, almost two years had passed. But for John, it was like it was last week.

His mind shifted briefly to the utter unconcern with the way Dorian had whipped his dick out to show John that, unlike the MXs, he was designed with all the luxury parts, and John couldn’t shake the image of what an impressive dick it had been too, nor the nagging curiosity as to why someone would create a synthetic who had the potential to be sexually active. He shrugged it off. He really, really didn’t want to know.

“Are you leaving? Lucky dog.” Valerie’s smile pulled him to a halt as effectively as if she’d hooked him with a fishing lure and was now reeling him in.

“Yeah, we got lucky. All the criminals were dumb today.”  He wished he could take back the words as soon as he said them and come back with something wittier, cleverer.

Her smile widened, as though he’d said something funny, just the same.  “You _are_ lucky. I’m going to be here a while.”

He opened his mouth to offer to bring her some dinner, but she continued speaking, one eyebrow raised, chin tucked slightly in apparent disbelief. “Did you really fix it so that Dorian is staying with Rudy? I just saw him leaving the building.”

“Not you, too.” John heard the grumpiness in his voice and attempted to moderate it. “Dorian’s been pissy with me all day because of that. You’d think I’d set him up in a cardboard box at the bus station, the way he’s been acting today.”

Valerie just continued to look up at him with that enigmatic expression, her delicate eyebrow somehow managing to convey amused disapproval.

“What?” John asked, palms up as he sought an explanation. “He wanted out of the precinct. I got him out of the precinct. I got him a room with someone who wouldn’t be freaked out by a synthetic, who’d get him.” Hell, Rudy acted as though the synthetics were alive. Dorian should have been pleased.

“I hear he wanted to room with you.” Valerie’s amusement overrode the disapproval. “What’s the matter, afraid he’ll cramp your style?”

John felt the heat of embarrassment color his face. When he first woke from his coma and was recovering from his injuries and learning how to use his prosthetic leg, he spent a lot of time watching late night television. A line from one of the campy old sci-fi shows he’d watched suddenly came to mind.

_Danger, Will Robinson!_

How to answer this question? If he said no, then he looked churlish for not letting Dorian stay with him. If he said yes, then she might get the wrong idea, and think he was a player. Unbidden, the thought of having anyone over to stay the night while Dorian and his Giant Schlong were charging up in the next room made him wince. No way.

“It’s not like that,” he said heavily.

“I don’t know, John. There’s not all that many people who can understand what it’s like to be a cop. At least with Dorian, he’d get what it was like at the end of a tough day.”

Which was why dating a co-worker made sense.

“Yeah, but I work with him all day long. I mean, I think it would be better for the working relationship if we weren’t together 24/7, you know?”

Which was why dating a co-worker was a terrible idea. John wanted to bang his head on the corner of Valerie’s desk.

Valerie, however, nodded. The smile on her face was slightly rueful. “I can see what you mean. Still, I can also understand why Dorian is upset.”

“Why? For God’s sake, please enlighten me.” He hoped she’d take the sarcastic tone in his voice for what it was, a commentary on Dorian’s behavior and not reflecting on her.

She shook her head, a strand of her long hair pulling out of the loose ponytail and falling forward to frame her face. “I don’t know that I should. You might not like it.”

“Oh, now you really have to tell me.” John parked himself on the edge of her desk. “Go on.” He encouraged her with a roll of his hand.

Looking slightly embarrassed, she cleared her throat. “Okay, remember, you asked for it. You’re not, um, how shall I put this? Not exactly circumspect when it comes to the feelings of others.”

“What?” John tucked his head back on his shoulders like a surprised turtle. “Are you saying I’m an insensitive jerk?”

“No, not exactly.” Valerie looked amused again, damn her.

“Give me one example of me being an insensitive bastard.” Perhaps not the wisest move he’d ever made in getting to know someone better but then again, maybe it was for the best. Best to get this out in the open.

Her smile faded. “Well, as you know, Rudy was quite excited and flattered that you asked for his help in that undercover operation.”

“Believe me, if I could have gotten anyone else that I thought had a hope of pulling off the job—”

She held up a hand. “I know. We all know that. But Rudy was flattered just the same. He felt like he was included, that he was special, and not just because he was going undercover but because _you_ asked him. Whether you know it or not, John, to Rudy, you’re quite cool.”

“Just to Rudy?” He couldn’t help but ask and then hated himself when he saw the sardonic tilt to her head.

She ignored his question. “So, Rudy is telling everyone who will listen how fantastic this is, how he’s gone to great lengths to create a persona for himself. But I heard that right before he went out on his assignment, you shot down the fedora.”

“Wait, are you talking about the hat? Because the hat had to go!” John straightened out of his slouch, indignant at the implication he’d done something wrong here.

Valerie looked at him pityingly. “See, you don’t get why you were wrong. It was Rudy’s character, John. He’d created it. The hat made him feel bad-ass. It _made_ the character for him. And what do you do moments before you send him out to face ruthless drug merchants and proven killers? You, his personal hero, tear down his character right before his eyes. You should have let him keep the hat.”

John gaped at her. “You can’t be serious. The hat was ridiculous. He looked like an idiot, and worse, it made him look like someone who was trying too hard. It was an obvious disguise.”

She shook her head. “Not if he believed in it. Not if it gave him confidence. Besides,” her smile slowly returned, “I think the hat was hot.”

“Hot. You think Rudy in a hat was _hot_?” He was going to have to seriously rethink her intelligence level. Or at the very least, her sense of esthetics.

Her smile became unreadable, somehow mysterious. It seemed to dwell on some unseen memory, expanding into a sort of purr as she spoke. “Yes. Hot. Very hot.”

John pondered this for a moment before giving a little shake like a wet dog coming in from the rain. “Okay. For the sake of argument, I could’ve timed my inspection of Rudy’s disguise a bit better.”  Looking at it from her point of view, it was a wonder that Rudy hadn’t been killed. He felt a stab of guilt when he recalled seeing Dorian help Rudy out of his hiding place, his arm drenched in blood. It had been a very near thing, and if Rudy hadn’t been so smart and reacted so instinctively, he _would_ be dead, and John would be out a very good tech, not to mention a decent, if odd, guy.

“And Dorian?” Because he knew she was going to tell him he’d made a mistake there, too. “How was setting him up to room with Rudy wrong?”

“You didn’t ask him, John.” There was a touch of pity in her voice at his blindness. “You just went ahead and set it up without asking him if this was something he wanted to do.”

He opened and closed his mouth several times but nothing came out.

She rocked back a little in her seat, and made a show of checking the datastream on her viewscreen. She opened a link, glanced briefly at the memo within, and with a flick of her finger, sent it to the trash. When she looked up at him again, her expression was serious. “You can’t have it both ways, John. You can’t treat him as a partner one minute and like an appliance the other. He’s not a toaster, and you know it. He cares more about hurting Rudy’s feelings than you do.” She checked his reaction to her comment, and then turned her gaze away to her computer screen, where new data was starting to scroll across.

“Hey,” he said, as he pushed himself to his feet. “I care about Rudy’s feelings.” And he did. Sorta. Crap, she was right. “Okay, you have a point.”

She looked up at him again, the desire to please him at war with her need to call it as she saw it, even if it meant putting an end to any possible budding relationship between them. He had to admire her for that.

“Right then. I’d better let you get back to work.” He shoved off with an airy wave of his hand, noting the mix of disappointment and concern on her face.  Well, she’d just have to wonder for now. He wasn’t sure what he wanted anyway. Tempting as she was, someone like Valerie Stahl was unlikely to settle for a friends-with-benefits sort of arrangement, and right now, that’s what he needed. Someone who could understand the need for sexual release without all the emotional baggage that went with it. Until he worked through some of his anger at losing nearly two years of his life, as well as the life of his friend and partner, John was better off alone.

He kept telling himself that the entire way home.

He reminded himself of it again as he entered the quiet stillness of his apartment, the lights coming on as he entered the room. The temperature was a comfortable 21 degrees C, even though the heating had been turned down before he left this morning. He knew the apartment was programmed to react to the most likely time he would arrive home by gently warming up or cooling the place in anticipation of his arrival. He tossed his jacket over the couch, resenting the efficiency of the heating system for no good reason. He prowled around the kitchen, finding nothing remotely edible. Even the leftover takeout in the fridge was growing mold.

While he waited for his favorite restaurant to deliver his favorite meal, he groused about the money he was spending on eating out as he stalked about the apartment. For once, instead of feeling like a blessed oasis, he felt oppressed by its spaciousness and the utter quiet.  Which was stupid. It was one of the things he liked best about this place. Having been in a coma for 18 months, he’d lost his previous apartment. Which was just as well, as he’d lived there with Anna. This place was all his, his private space where he could regroup and recharge so he could face another day in a world out to kill him. He didn’t want to share it with anyone.

Yet tonight, the solitude seemed to mock him. He stood at the door to his spare room, the room he’d called his trophy room to Dorian. There, along the walls and mounted on shelves, were the many awards and trophies he’d won in high school and college for playing football. He could almost hear the crowds roar as he stared at them. He walked the room, dragging a finger through the dust that had gathered on the shelves since the last time he’d been in here. His belongings had been in storage the same period of time that he’d been in stasis. He’d felt a fierce satisfaction at being able to put his things in their proper place when he’d chosen this apartment. But tonight, they seemed nothing but empty reminders of glory days gone past. Were they so important to him because they represented a time when he was whole, when he was young, and his prowess and athleticism went unchallenged? Was that the real reason he hadn’t wanted Dorian to stay in this room? Because it was a mausoleum for his former life? A sort of shrine to the past, like the room of a dead child whose parent couldn’t let go, couldn’t move on.

He paused at one shelf, different from the rest. No gold statuettes or shiny medals hanging from faded ribbons. Instead, nostalgia of a different kind stared back at him. On this shelf lay the gateway to foreign lands, to mysterious strangers, and high adventure. Quests to ancient cities that were the making of a man. Oh sure, the technology had changed, but he still felt a kinship with the old formats familiar from his youth.  It was almost like running into an old friend.

He no longer could decide if refusing to let Dorian stay with him had been sensible or selfish.

He inspected dusty fingers before wiping them off on his jeans. The door slid closed behind him as he left the room.

The next morning, when Dorian got into the car, John tossed a book into his lap. “Here. Got you a little something.”

Dorian picked it up with curiosity, turning the book over to read the title off the spine. “What is it?” he asked.

“What is it?” John was shocked. “It’s a book, Dorian. You said you liked the feel of an e-reader in your hands, right? Well that’s nothing compared to the real deal here. The heft and weight of the printed word. The feel of the paper, the smell of the glue in the binding. You want an experience? Then you have to try reading a real book printed on real paper.”

Dorian opened the front cover, his eyes lighting up as he smoothed one hand down the frontispiece. He turned the pages carefully, with a sort of reverence. “’It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,’” he read. He looked up at John, a smile blooming on his face. “Thank you, John. I’m going to enjoy this tremendously.”

“This is only a loaner.” John was quick to point out the conditions of the deal. Dorian was looking far too infatuated with the book, like that weird creature in the caves in one of the stories he’d read as a kid, the one that had the gold ring it called ‘Precious’. “I want it back,” he stressed.

“Of course.” Dorian was beaming now. “You like me.”

“What? No, I just thought you might...hell, I thought, you know, one reader to another. That’s all.”

“You like me.” Dorian had that oh-so-smug smile on his face, the one that John wanted to wipe off whenever he saw it.

“I do not.”

“Do to.”

“Do you want me to take the book back?”

Dorian closed his arms protectively around the book but said nothing, continuing to smile as he looked out the window.

“You’re gonna take good care of that, right? Because they aren’t making books like that anymore.”

“I’ll be careful with it, John. Thank you.” Dorian stroked the surface of the book as though it was a small cat.

“Okay, then.” John heard his voice turn gruff. It was the closest he’d ever come to an apology and he knew it.  He cleared his throat. “Right. What’s on the agenda for today?”

The side of Dorian’s face flickered blue as circuitry lit up and engaged with the database. He began listing the various crimes reported that morning and the assignment roster.

Yep, just another day on the job. Maybe if they got done early tonight, he’d sit down with a good book.

~fin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
